After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Great Fire of London: Who started it?

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

(1/2) London's Burning! London's Burning! Disaster strikes in 1666 as the dense, mostly wooden, city of London begins to burn. Who started the fire? Why did it spread like none before or since?Maddy Pelling tells Anthony Delaney the story, including a special contribution from Pete Zymanczyk, a retired LFB firefighter who is now a City of London Guide. They offer dozens of historical tours of the City of London. Find out more: https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Edited by Matt Peaty. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Hi, we're your hosts, Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like after dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. London, as it stood on the day before the Great Fire started, was a city moulded by hundreds of years of inhabitants. Its streets were narrow, formed by closely packed wooden houses with crooked overhangs and swinging shop signs

that blotted out the daylight and caused any on horseback to duck perilously as they passed by. Everywhere there was noise and filth. Animal and human slot ran on the pavements. There was overcrowding, fighting, trade, sex. Even the ancient churches dotted about the city, each marking a small parish in the disordered hole could not regulate this unsanitary and rude rambling place. But London was also the envy of Europe, a place of commerce and learning. There were the gleaming shops of Cheapside and the mighty Thames at its heart. In the midst of all this was Pudding Lane, set close to the river and, famously end trails, and Pudding Lane ran with them, hot with the stench of animals alongside all this colourful human life.

The day before the fire started was a hot one, one of many such days that summer in which the temperate weather had baked the scent of the lane until it was overwhelming. Not that it would have put off any hungry Londoners looking for a meal in this part of the city, because among the chatter of the locals, shouts of hot pies and pastries, hot roast beef, filled the air. It's to one of the houses from which such cries emanate that we must now turn our focus. About halfway up the lane was a bakery, home to Thomas Farina, a hardworking man popular with the locals, and whose contract to supply hard tack, that is, small dried biscuits, to the Royal Navy, allowed him to market as the Royal Baker.

As the usual curfew bell sounded at around 9pm on Saturday the 2nd of September 1666, Thomas Fariner closed up his shop for the day. Later, he would testify that he had checked the fire of his bakehouse oven, and that it had died down before he retired to bed early. His daughter, Hannah, who preferred a later bedtime around midnight, would swear the same. But, as the house slept, Thomas, Hannah, Thomas's son, also called Thomas, a journeyman apprentice and a maid all dreaming in their respective chambers, something terrible had already been

put in motion. It was in the darkest hour that the family awoke, suddenly unto the smell of smoke. Blinking sleep from their eyes, hearts thudding loudly, they were roused from their beds by the terror that stalked the nightmares of all Londoners. Fire. Hello there and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony. And I'm Maddie. And in this episode we are exploring the history

of all the bakers in London in the 17th century called Thomas, no, joking. We're looking at the Great Fire of London, of course. We're here in London in 1666, and we're stepping into the roaring, smarting heat of one of, I suppose, really, it's the most memorable and terrifying events in English history, the Great Fire. We'll be doing this across two episodes, delving into the facts and tracing the fire from its supposed origin in Pudding Lane to the last fizzled out ember. And we'll

be looking at what this disaster can tell us about 17th century life. Now, if you're interested in other things that are happening in this decade in England, please do check out our two-parter on Ian Plague Village as well. So you can go back and check that out. But Maddie, here we are. We've talked about this episode for these episodes for quite a while, the Great Fire of London. Yes, this topic has absolutely been on our list, I think, since day one.

It's something I've wanted to do for a really long time. But I'm interested, Anthony, growing up in Ireland, did you study this? Because something that we've discovered as we've gone through this podcast is that the historical education that we've had as children and at university has been quite different based geographically on where we've been and culturally where we've been. So is the Great Fire of London something on your radar? Let's say like at primary and secondary school, absolutely not. Didn't even register. It wasn't. I mean, it was there in the background.

I knew it had happened, obviously, but we don't study it in any great detail. It doesn't have much relevance to Irish history, obviously, although I'm sure there's some Irish link. I bet you the baker was Irish or something. But anyway, what I mean is, no, it doesn't resonate in the same way. It's not as iconic as it is. After I left drama school, I was teaching in primary schools in Haringey and Tottenham and they, I was teaching drama, but I would see their

history projects in the classrooms and they would have shoe boxes depicting the great fire of London. So it was at that point that I really realised, Oh, wow, this is like iconic with young children. So it's, it's really interesting to see this come to fruition in these episodes. That has unlocked a child of memory shoe boxes, like made into young children. So it's really interesting to see this come to fruition in these episodes. That has unlocked a child of memory shoeboxes, like made into historic things. I'm pretty sure I made a Tudor house out of a shoebox one time. That's so exciting. Tell me this, when you were teaching in primary school, did you have to sing the nursery rhyme? No, I don't know. Do you not know it?

No, I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Can I force you to sing right now? Well, I don't know it. Will you learn it with me? Yeah, yeah, go on. I'm so sorry to anyone for what's about to happen. Will you learn it with me? Yeah, yeah, go on. I'm so sorry to anyone for what's about to happen. Okay, so it goes, London's burning, London's burning.

So that bit, please. London's burning, London's burning. Fantastic. Thank you. And then it goes, Fetch the engines, fetch the engines. Oh, I see where this is going. Fetch the engines, fetch the engines. Fire, fire, fire, fire. Fire, fire, fire, fire.

Pour on water, pour on water. Pour on water, pour on water. Okay, right. So here we go. London's burning, London's burning. London's burning, London's burning. Fetch the engines, fetch the engines. Fire, fire, fire, pour on water, pour on water, pour on water. And we will be taking this show on tour. Oh my god, okay. I'm sweating after that.

I know, I feel quite stressed. I feel like primary school flashbacks of being forced to sing. Okay, so not only am I an incredibly talented singer and that is my karaoke song of choice, but I also have other skin in the game. So I grew up being absolutely paranoid that my house would burn down because my dad is now a retired fireman. He spent many years in the fire service. And if anyone else has grown up with a firefighter as a parent, you'll know, you just get drilled in how to survive that fire. So let me just say, if the fire had started in my house

and not putting Lane, I would have known what to do. So shame on Thomas Farron, the baker. And my dad, an actual fireman, was on a day off once, pushing me, a little baby, in a pram through the park in London, when he accidentally walked through a shot of the TV show, London's Burning, which was about, it was a drama about firemen, and they kept it in. So me and my dad, an actual fireman, were on the show, London's Burning. I'm famous.

The Maddie trivia just keeps on going. Someone add it to my Wikipedia page that does not exist. Oh my God, I'm obsessed with it. Matty, give me some historical context. I don't want to know about you on TV. Okay, back to the history. So we're in 1666. We know from our Eam episode that the months before this are dogged by plague and the city of London

has been absolutely devastated. 1666 itself is considered a colossally important year by the people living through it, not the people looking back on it, but the people living through it. So one astrologer, a guy called Sir George Wharton, warns at the start of the year, and I don't think he would have been very good fun at a New Year's party. He says, good fun at a New Year's party. He says, now 1666 is come when shall be the day of doom. Not very light. John Dryden, the poet, ever heard of him, calls this same year, yeah he is a bit, calls the same year the Annus Mirabilis, the miraculous year or the year of wonder. And I just want everyone to hold that in their heads as we go through this history, because I think there's this idea in London, in England at the time,

that this moment that people are living in is a colossal disaster. There's something significant about it. Charles II is on the throne. He's the King of England, Scotland and Ireland following the restoration of the monarchy, of course, in 1660. He has spent the last year or so out of the city of London. He's been in Oxford because of the plague. With his lovely wigs. With his lovely wigs, importantly. I feel like they'd get saved in the fire. He would absolutely have prioritised them. It's also though a time of science and experimentation and new discovery. We don't only have this terrible death and disaster going on. So Isaac Newton in this moment is using a prism to split sunlight into the colours of the

optical spectrum and the writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, publishes two major books. The first is a sort of scientific work but the second one is a proto-science fiction work called The Blazing World which was the bane of my life at university. I look back on it funnily now, but it wasn't fun at the time. And now the name of a very lovely history book by Jonathan Healy, right? Absolutely. Shout out to that book. That's a great book. Yeah, if you want to know more about this time period, absolutely read that. So we have lots of sort of scientific advancements, but there's immense fear in this period. There's fear of disease, of course, with the plague. There's a fear of foreigners as well. And this extends out onto the street at a local level in London. The civil wars

and all of that violence are only a couple of decades in the past. This is still in living memory. All of that trauma, all of that bloodshed. Currently in 1666, there's the second Anglo Dutch war going on. Now this is a naval conflict primarily that's been fought between England and the Dutch Republic that's sort of underpinned by various political and commercial situations that are a bit too complicated to go into here. But so there's a lot of- And when she says complicated, she means boring.

Yeah. It's not, it's not the most exciting war that's ever happened. No. Importantly as well for us in this story, in England, in the south of England, there's been about 10 months of a really serious drought. There's been no rain at all. And of course this means in a city made of wooden buildings the conditions are very very dry and very perfect for what is going to come. So it's in this context, this climate, this nervous shifting climate that the fire first sparks up but let's get into this micro history that we start with, we start not with an entire city on fire,

but a fire that is igniting in a baker's on Pudding Lane. The first thing I want to ask, Anthony, do you think the fire really did start there or is it just myth? Oh, see, now I get very confused with the myths around the Great Fire. So we know, for instance, that one of the myths is that the fire ended up stopping all the plague, and we've learned in a previous episode of After Dark that that wasn't necessarily the case at all. Did it start in Pudding Lane? I think from what I know, the answer to that is yes. Tell me if I'm wrong. You are correct. So, yeah, it really did start there. Also, historians and archaeologists believe. So as much as we know, yeah.

As much as we know. So in the Bake House, where this begins, we have Thomas Fariner, who is a baker. He's also a church warden. Side note, I wonder, do you know the bakery chain, Thomas the Baker? I wonder if that's named after him. Maybe it's just in the North of England. Write in and tell me if you know what that is, what that's named after. Never heard named after. I mean, of all the famous bakers, maybe don't name your baking chain after the guy who started the Great Fire of London. But anyway, so we have Thomas, he's living there with his daughter

Hannah, and there's certainly a maid in the household. In some accounts, we also have his son, also called Thomas, a classic. And we also have a man living in the house who is named as either an apprentice or a journeyman, so someone who would ferry goods around, so who would probably go and distribute the baked goods on behalf of Thomas. And this guy's name was Thomas Dagger, which is not only a great name, but it has been recently discovered by some historians at the University of Leicester that Thomas Dagger was probably the person who first discovered the fire in that house. So he was the first person to see what was going to become the great fire of

London, which is just so tantalising. It's amazing. Yeah. So Thomas himself, Thomas Farrinard, the baker and the head of this family was a really respected member of the community. His bakery was well known. He joined the Worshipful Company of Bakers, which was member of the community. His bakery was well known. He joined the Worshipful Company of Bakers, which was one of the liveried guilds of the City of London in the 1730s.

And by 1749, he had his own shop in Pudding Lane. So he was a savvy businessman. And as we heard in the introduction, the bakery itself was known as the Royal Bakery or the King's Bakery, not because Farinor was making the morning panneau chocolat for Charles II, but because he would bake these dried, kind of hard, quite bland biscuits known as hardtack that essentially didn't rot, they didn't go off, they would last for ages and they were fed to the sailors of the Royal Navy. And of course, remember Pudding Lane and the shop that was quite close to the Thames. So we have this household that goes to bed, at least two members. We know that Thomas, the father, and Hannah, the daughter, check the Bakehouse oven fire has at least died down. And I think we have to remember, and certainly people will notice if they live in houses with fires today, if you have

a fire in a fireplace or a grate even, often it's not completely put out before you go to bed. The embers might be glowing, and actually if you come down in the morning, they might still be hot, and on a winter's day, you can relight that fire and sort of keep it going. So I don't think it was necessarily that the Bakehouse ovens would be cold to the touch and fully out when they went to bed, but I think they would be under control and just glowing at that point. But at around about 1am on Sunday the 2nd of September, Thomas Dagger, the journeyman, wakes up to the smell of smoke coming up through the floorboards from the bakery, which is on the ground floor of the house. And he alerts the rest of the family. He shouts that there's a fire. Everyone in the house escapes through a window, an upper window, apart from

the maid. And the only account I could find of her said that she was simply too frightened to move and so died in the house. And I don't think that's great from the rest of the family that they just left the maid to die. That doesn't seem wonderful. Also, not sure if I'd buy it really, historically. Too frightened to move. I don't know.

Listen, we'll never know. But it's a weird one, isn't it? It's a strange take on that. Well, I think if we can take anything away from that, if we take it at face value, it's that fire was genuinely terrifying. It was something that haunted the dreams of people who lived in a city that was essentially one big tinderbox, that was primarily wooden houses, certainly in this area, everything packed in close together. It was a terrifying prospect. So there would have been fear felt by all of them. Does that

necessarily mean she was too frightened to move? I don't know. Maybe she was injured. Maybe she couldn't get out in time. Maybe she passed out from smoke inhalation. We'll never know the reality of that. But she is the first person to be claimed by the Great Fire of London. At the moment, this is a house fire. This is not a fire that's spreading. This is contained to a single property. It's disastrous for the bakery and it's incredibly dangerous for the family inside who do escape. But that's all it is at this point. I have a feeling you're going to tell me that changes. A hot dry wind blew and blew throughout that night.

It whistled down Pudding Lane, coaxing the fire from Farinus' house to his neighbours, dancing hand in hand with the flames between the wooden overhangs of houses. Soon a house fire had become a street fire. Then an ember spiralled up into the night and was carried towards neighbouring Fish Street, one of the main routes into London. It landed on a haystack in the yard of an inn. The blaze spread. Onlookers watched, flames flickering in their eyes as more and more buildings joined the dance, timber frames transforming to red against the night sky.

Now you'd be forgiven for thinking the fact that the fire started so near the River Thames was a good thing, a help even to those trying to fight it in a desperate scramble with buckets of water. But it was in fact bad news, and every local there knew why. The wharf buildings by the water were full of stores of tar and pitch, hemp and flax. The riverbank was a tinderbox waiting to be lit. By the time morning came, the fire was no longer confined to just Pudding Lane or Fish Street. By now, it had torn through three hundred homes and counting, having caught the wharves on the

riverbank, a shower of fire drops shooting high over London as the sparks caught. Two churches that had stood since before the Norman conquest were already gone. The beast was loose now, and the situation out of control. What had started in a tiny bakery had its jaws around a whole swathe of the city. The only question that remained was could anything stop it? You forget, I think, when you're talking about the Great Fire, just how quickly it goes from a house fire, as you you described earlier into something that's significantly more devastating and significantly more widespread. And I said quickly there, but actually you know you're talking about something that happened overnight and then the winds were blowing and then there was so time has elapsed. Nonetheless, not enough time for people to get this under control.

So what do we know about the speed of this, Maddie? Like how quickly is this really spreading? It's a really interesting question. And I think we need to understand a little bit about how fire works, how it operates, because it's, you know, thankfully, not something that many of us come into contact with on a day-to-day basis now.

In order to understand this, to understand how the fire spread, we've actually spoken to Pete Semancik, who is a retired divisional officer from the London Fire Brigade. He worked for the Fire Brigade for 31 years, including working at a fire station that covers the very streets of Pudding Lane and Fish Street that we're going to be talking about over the course of this episode. Nowadays, he is a City of London guide and he takes people on walking tours of the area to share his love of its history and his expertise in firefighting. So without further ado, you're now going to hear our producer, Freddie, chatting to Pete about what the scene

would have looked like on Pudding Lane and the early hours of that Sunday morning. I think the people close to the fire would have been very, very concerned for their properties and they'd have been making every effort they could in order to extinguish the fire. People further away would probably have been interested by standards because fires happened all the time in London and because this is the first time that London totally burned down we must assume that all the other fires before it were properly extinguished so they would have been interested to look. I mean even today Londoners love a good fire.

Probably the contents of the house will be burning first. And then eventually it would be the structure, the beams, the columns that are holding the house up, all of which are made of timber. That would start to burn. The use of thatch had been banned since the 13th century. So these would have had proper roof tiles, but people in poorer houses may just have had a board they covered in pitch or tar

to make it waterproof all of which would have burned very quickly so once the timber is caught fire it's it's a difficult situation you are at risk of the building collapsing that's when you get all the embers being thrown up in the air bits of the building might lean against the building across the road or to the side and start the fire going there as well. And because you're close to the docks, any spare space they would have made money on by acting as mini warehouses.

So they would have kept flammable materials in their basements. They may have kept it in their attics. So all of that would have carried on and it all just becomes bigger and the fire would spread. To be really close to a large fire can be both exciting and terrifying. You have your training, you have your knowledge, and you've got some idea of

what could happen next what you're expecting to happen next but fire is a living breathing creature it eats anything in its path it breathes oxygen it generates heat you have a good idea what it's going to do, but you know what, sometimes it does something unexpected. Do you know, I actually feel really moved by Pete's words because he sounds so much like my dad, the conversations that I've had with my dad when he's told me about his experiences and especially fire itself being this kind of living thing that can change and shift really quickly, and the situation and the danger level can shift really quickly. And I think for people

in the 17th century who only had rudimentary means of fighting a fire, it must have been completely overwhelming and terrifying as this fire suddenly, very, very quickly, got out of hand. You know what else struck me there when he was talking about it? There is this very macabre beauty about some of what he was describing. So at one point he describes this obviously horrendous house collapsing in on top of itself. But in that collapse, the embers being thrown up into, you can imagine the embers being thrown up into the London night sky in the 17th century and just these little sparks then dispersing across the nearby houses and then into the other streets. And it's in these little balls of glowing beauty but ferocity that this fire starts to take hold. And there's something even more insipid about that visually captivating like he's saying, like you can't look away because there's something really entrancing about it, but at the same time it's devastating.

Yeah, I mean, it's a spectacle, isn't it? And you can see Pete speculating there that people may have come to watch it. And I think that's probably true. You know, it was, fire was one of the worst things that could happen in the city. It was everyone's biggest fear, but it was also this kind of what we would think of today, possibly as sort of cinematic experience, you know, happening before you in real time. And it must have been exciting, for want of a better word, thrilling until it was clear that it had gone too far. Yeah. And that And that shift, that change is so terrifying to us. But the other real clear thing that Pete made very obvious there is that people know how to put fires out. And I would imagine, therefore, that they are also trying to put what becomes the Great Fire of London out as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. So there were some training, there was some equipment available to people in order to fight a fire Yeah, absolutely. So there were some training, there were some equipment

available to people in order to fight a fire in this period. So every parish church would keep things like buckets, ladders, chains that could be used to pull down buildings on fire. There was also something in the 17th century called the squirt. So this was basically like a huge syringe type thing that was made out of brass and it could suck up about nine metres of water. So think again about how close it is to the Thames. It would be manned by two men and a third one would have to push the plunger to get the water to come out onto the fire. We do know that once it becomes clear that the fire is getting worse, the Lord Mayor of the city, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, is called out. He is woken up in his bed and he's called to come to the scene of the fire.

But when he gets there, he's reluctant to do anything. And I've been racking my brains thinking about why this might be. And Pete mentioned a very good reason there that there must have been other fires in London in the years, the centuries before the Great Fire that burned it all down. And so he must have felt to a certain extent confident that it would be put out. The other thing to say, and we're going to talk about this in more detail across these two episodes, is that one of the ways to stop a fire in its tracks is to create a fire break, so to destroy something in its path so that it can't continue to grow. And you see that on like Moorland and stuff when sections of heather are burned so that any fire that breaks out would stop at that natural point and not continue. And one of the ways to create

a firebreak in a city, of course, is to pull down houses. Now, the Lord Mayor is going to be incredibly unpopular if he starts pulling down houses that are not already on fire. Famously as well, in this moment, in talking about the fire as being weak and not a threat, he jokes that a woman could piss it out. He says the fire is that ineffective, a little dainty woman could piss it out. And with that, he heads off back to bed. This is a mistake. Oh yeah, that's going to condemn you to the annals of history, isn't it? I mean, it's interesting that we have such a specific account of his reaction to it, and I agree, Maddie, everything that you're saying about him coming out and you would imagine that there's going to be something to be done here. It's interesting that he was called because

actually, why was he called when there are so many fires? Maybe it was just a courtesy that he's called as the mayor, whatever, but that he thinks, well, there's no need for me to be here. What can I do? This is just, you know, an everyday occurrence or, you know, a very regular occurrence in London anyway. But the other name that's ringing in my head throughout all of this is Samuel Pepys, who is, of course, famous for his diaries that he's left us about life in 17th century London and England more generally. It's really easy to forget that he's also a relatively important civil servant. So he plays a part in the administration of this city, and he will be playing a part in the administration of this fire as well.

But everyone who studies the Great Fire at undergrad level, probably even in school, I presume, we read the passages that Peep's has left us. And it's a really important source of information for us, for what people are experiencing and what they're seeing. I believe we have an extract of that. Yeah, so what you're about to hear is a section of Peep's diary from Sunday the 2nd of September. So the first official day, the first full day of the fire, it starts in the early hours,

1 or 2 a.m. in the morning as we we've heard. Now, Pepys himself doesn't live anywhere near Pudding Lane, but in the night, some of his servants have seen the fire from the top of his house. They can see it happening across the city, and they've watched it grow. And they wake him up in the morning and they say, you know, look out the window, have you seen what's going on? And he's absolutely captivated. And at first, you know, he sort of reasons, well, it's quite far away, it's all going to be fine. But it is clear already that the fire is growing. And you can, I think, hear in Peep's writing in this moment, the unease that's being seeded in his mind and the mind of his household. Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast today. Jane called us up about three in the morning to tell us of a great fire in the city. So

I rose and slipped on my nightgown and and went to her window, and thought it to be on the back side of Mark Lane at the farthest. But being unused to such fires as followed, I thought it far enough off, and so went to bed again, and to sleep. About seven, rose again to dress myself. By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above three hundred houses have been burned down tonight, by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish Street, by London Bridge.

So I made myself ready presently and walked to the Tower of London, and there got up upon one of the high places, and there I did see the houses at that end of the bridge, all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side of the bridge. So down, with my heart full of trouble, to the lieutenant of the tower, who tells me that it begun this morning in the King's baker's house in Pudding Lane, and that it hath burnt St Magnus' church and most part of Fish Street already. So I downed to the waterside, and there got a boat and threw bridge and there saw a lamentable fire. In his mind and the mind of his household. Again, imagery, I think actually what's becoming really clear to me is one of the reasons that this fire endures so much in the popular imagination and in school rooms and in history still is because it lends itself so easily to imagery and to impactful imagery.

And I'm getting this imagery from Peep's diary entry there of actually people, similar to what Pete described, our firemen that we listened to earlier, of people swarming towards the glow slightly and keeping at a relatively safe distance. But like we're seeing this idea of public transport taking you as close as possible to the fire. So again, we have that like London at this time and again then in the 18th century, it's known for its spectacle. And somehow this tragic event becomes one of those spectacles and people can't quite turn away and Peep's is amongst those people. Yeah, I think that's correct. And I think as well, you know, Peep's heads to the water. And the Thames itself is an important character in the story, not least because I suppose it's the safe haven, it's the elemental opposite of what's happening on the riverbank and beyond. People are heading

to it not only to gather water to try and fight the fire, but simply for safety. And people are getting onto boats at this point with their possessions to escape the fire that's coming for them. I think it's fascinating at the end of what Peep says there as well, that the fire is still moving. It's still growing. He watches it from a boat on the Thames as it takes more and more buildings. It's eating its way through the landscape. Even though Peep's house at this point isn't necessarily that close to the fire at this stage, there must have been a feeling of real nervousness watching it consume all those big landmarks and those buildings and those

assume all those big landmarks and those buildings and those elements of the riverbank that peeps and others were so familiar with. This is a city, let's not forget, that is mapped into people's minds according to landmarks, not even necessarily street names really, but the building with the funny crooked chimney., you know, in this period, literacy rates are low enough that pubs, taverns, brothels, the signs of them are images or sometimes carved objects. So like the red lion might be a literal wooden lion outside painted red so that people can identify them. And when you look at early books and pamphlets that are printed, it'll say printed at such and such as printers on the corner by the golden fleece and the pawnbrokers with the three gold balls above the door. You know, it's a city that's understood in these very local, very material, very visual terms. And that is all being obliterated by the

fire. All of that is gone. And how do you understand a city when all of that has disappeared? And I think it would have been not only tragic to see people lose their private property, but to lose this collective space, this layered, wonky, complicated warren of a city, and it's all disappearing and all that familiarity has gone in a second of the fire. So where have we gotten to? We have a fire that starts at Thomas Farrin's house on Pudding Lane, which is the house itself destroyed very quickly. Pudding Lane is obliterated more or less. We now see the fire starting to spread. We're hearing these micro histories as we go. News is traveling throughout London.

The likes of Samuel Peepes are turning out to see this devastation for themselves. Servants are awakening. They're looking out their windows and they're seeing from across the river this history that Maddy was just describing and this social and cultural melting pot that Maddy was just describing. They're seeing it fall into ruin. And the devastating thing about this, as Maddy has just hinted towards, is that the fire shows no signs of letting up, because the conditions are absolutely perfect for burning to continue and for the fire to spread. So before we leave you for this episode, join us again for episode two, of course, but Maddie's going to give you one final insight

into how this fire continues to progress. On the Sunday morning, the first full day of the fire, Samuel Pepys had taken a boat out onto the Thames and watched from the river for an hour as the conflagration raged in every direction. He saw Londoners scrambling to carry their treasures to safety, rats rushing to the water, and pigeons reluctant to abandon burning nests clinging to their perches before tumbling into the flames. He watched the fire creeping around the corners of streets to devour whole houses, clawing its way up church steeples like a terrible beast clambering to a vantage point from which to survey the

city its prey. After that, Peep rushed to the King of Whitehall to await instruction. Orders soon followed. He was to go and find Mayor Bloodworth and demand that he start pulling down houses, this time without delay. Peeps found the mayor on Canning Street, famous for its linen shops, all now in tatters of course, with the handkerchief wound at his face and neck to escape the worst of the smoke. Later on, Peeps would describe how, when the mayor heard the king's message, he cried out like a fainting woman, Lord, what can I do? I am spent.

People will not obey me. Then, Bloodworth turned tail, saying he had to go home and refresh himself. That would be the last anyone would see of him. At the end of his remarkable diary entry for that day, Peeps describes how he spent the evening in an ale house on the bank of the Thames, waiting for the wind to change and the burning embers raining down on the river to lessen so he could cross back home. As the daylight faded, raining down on the river to lessen so he could cross back home.

As the daylight faded, he and his friends watched the fire spread as far as they could see into the city. Churches, houses, businesses, taverns, brothels, shops, all burning in a dreadful, almost blood-red haze, the roar of the flames and the cracking of timber almost deafening. By the time darkness fell, or should have fallen, for the flames illuminated the city and cast terrible shadows, London had turned into one vast unearthly arc of fire that stretched over a mile long. Peep says he began to weep.

As the mismanaged disaster spread through the hot and melting streets, panic, fear, and rumors that the fire had been started by foreign spies took hold. Trust was disintegrating fast in a city whose face was cracking and burning off. But that's next time on After Dark. Well, as ever, thank you for listening, but a big thank you to Pete Zermantchik, our ex-firefighter and current City of London guide for his contribution today. The City of London guides have dozens of different guides and walking tours available, exploring all sides of the history of the City of London guides have dozens of different guides and walking tours available, exploring all sides of the history of the City of London.

So if you want to find out more, you can visit their website at cityoflondonguides.com as ever. Do get in touch with us to let us know what you thought of this episode, the show in general. Our email address is afterdark at historyhit.com. And join us again next week for part two of this fascinating history.